Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.

Then things went horribly wrong. It turned out that the suspected terrorist in Norway wasn't a Muslim. He hated Muslims. And he admired Geller.

In a manifesto posted online, the admitted killer, Anders Behring Breivik, praised Geller. He cited her blog, Atlas Shrugs, and the writings of her friends, allies, and collaborators—Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, Islam Watch, and Front Page magazine—more than 250 times. And he echoed their tactics, tarring peaceful Muslims with the crimes of violent Muslims. He wrote that all Muslims sought to impose "sharia laws" and that "there are no important theological differences between jihadists and so-called 'peaceful' or 'moderate' Muslims." He reprinted, as part of the manifesto, a 2006 essay by "Fjordman"—a blogger whose work appears frequently on Geller's site—which argued that "radical Muslims and moderate Muslims are allies" and that because Islam teaches deception, no Muslim who claims to be moderate can be trusted.

Scan Geller's blog and her friends' sites, and you'll see how thickly these ideas pervaded Breivik's online world. Jihad Watch says "Islam is intrinsically violent." Islam Watch asserts that "terrorism … is the real Islam," that "Islam is beyond alteration," and that "it needs to be emasculated, marginalized or eliminated altogether." Geller has published Fjordman's views—"I do not believe that there is such a thing as a moderate Islam"—with her own proud note that "I have long derided the 'moderate Islam' meme as a theory with no basis in reality or history." Four days before Breivik opened fire, she posted an item headlined, "Moderates vs. Radicals—What's the Difference?" She joked that "one straps one on, and the other covers for jihad." She concluded that "there really is no difference between muslims and radical muslims."

Despite these statements, Geller continues to depict Abdul Rauf as a terrorist sympathizer. Her evidence is a series of secondhand, thirdhand, and nonexistent connections. "Rauf is an open proponent of Islamic law, Sharia, with its oppression of women, stonings, and amputations," she asserts, falsely. He "was a prominent member of the Perdana organization, a leading funder of the jihad flotilla launched against Israel in 2010 by the genocidal Islamic terror group, IHH." One of his books was supported by the International Institute of Islamic Thought and the Islamic Society of North America, which are "Muslim Brotherhood fronts," and ISNA "was named an unindicted co-conspirator" in a "Hamas terror funding case." Another Abdul Rauf book was promoted in Malaysia at a meeting of an organization that's been banned in some countries.

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You can use this guilt-by-association tactic against anybody. To take the simplest case: President George W. Bush sent Abdul Rauf to the Muslim world as an informal ambassador. That makes Bush a supporter of a supporter of terrorism. But the new poster child for guilt by association is Geller herself. She has been implicated in the Norwegian massacre.

Geller is outraged. "Attempts to link us to these murders on the basis of alleged postings by the murderer mentioning us are absurd and offensive," she writes. Breivik "is responsible for his actions. He and only he." She adds: "Watching CNN and BBC coverage about Norway, I found very disturbing to hear the number of times they use the word 'Christian.' They would never dare refer to religion when it is jihad, and this attack had nothing to do with Christianity."

Now you know how it feels, Ms. Geller. When the terrorist is a Christian—in his own words, a "Crusader" for "Christendom"—and when the preacher to whom he has been linked is you, you suddenly discover the injustice of group blame and guilt by association. The citations you didn't create, the intermediaries you didn't recognize, the transactions you didn't know about, the violent interpretations you didn't condone—these exonerating facts suddenly matter.

Two of our soldiers were gunned down in Germany, and the fellow who shot them shouted "Allah Akhbar" before he did that. And just the week before that, we had a 20-year-old from Saudi Arabia, here on a student visa in Dallas, who had accumulated all of the chemicals necessary to create a bomb on the order of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. … If we don't understand that there are Sharia-compliant terrorists in our midst … we will make ourselves more vulnerable.

Well, now we have a Crusade-compliant terrorist who has accumulated explosive chemicals, blown up a federal building with a bomb on the order of Oklahoma City, and gunned down scores of civilians. Don't hold your breath waiting for Bachmann or anyone else in Congress to investigate the Christian angle.

The vindictive part of me wants to blame Geller and her ilk for what happened in Oslo. But then I remember something Abdul Rauf said: "The Quran explicitly states that no soul shall be responsible for the sins of another. Terrorism, which targets innocents who had no part in a crime, fundamentally violates this Quranic commandment." That principle—that no one should be held responsible for another person's sins—is the moral core of the struggle against terrorism. It's the reason I can't pin the slaughter in Norway on bloggers who never advocated sectarian violence. I just wish those bloggers, and the politicians who echo them, would show Muslims the same courtesy.